Bitly facing Data Breach

Bitly was one of the most famous URL shortening services which were founded in the year 2008 based in New York which shortens more than one billion links for a month for social networks, email and SMS etc., Recently in a blog post, Bitly had issued a security warning to update the bitly account after the company suspected that some of the user account may be compromised.

As a security precaution the companies removes the users of facebook and twitter users and also asked the users to change their passwords and reconnect to their Facebook and Twitter accounts to the site. The company believes that some of the Bitly account credentials like email address, encrypted passwords, API keys and OAuth tokens may be compromised. The links that published with Facebook and Twitter will be enabled only after they reconnect to the accounts.

The following are the steps to reset the OAuth tokens and API keys as per Bitly,

1) Log in to your account and click on ‘Your Settings,’ then the ‘Advanced’ tab.

2) At the bottom of the ‘Advanced’ tab, select ‘Reset’ next to ‘Legacy API key.’

3) Copy down your new API key and change it in all applications. These can include social publishers, share buttons and mobile apps.

4) Go to the ‘Profile’ tab and reset your password.

5) Disconnect and reconnect any applications that use bitly. You can check which accounts are connected under the ‘Connected Accounts’ tab in ‘Your Settings.’

The company also added that the proactive measure was taken for the security to all user data in future.